Democracy Now! Blog

Democracy Now! is broadcasting from the annual U.N. Climate Change Summit, as it convenes in Doha, Qatar. Tune in this week to see our coverage of the official proceedings, as well as events outside the conference. As Amy Goodman noted in her recent column, "No world leader at the U.N. climate change summit hasn’t heard the warnings, but it will take popular pressure to make them act."

The annual United Nations climate summit has convened, this year in Doha, the capital of the oil-rich emirate of Qatar, on the Arabian Peninsula. Dubbed “COP 18,” an army of bureaucrats, business people and environmentalists are gathered ostensibly to limit global greenhouse-gas emissions to a level that scientists say will contain the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.8 degrees Fahrenheit), and perhaps stave off global climate catastrophe. If past meetings are any indication, national self-interest on the part of the world’s largest polluters, paramount among them the United States, will trump global consensus.

We interview political and economic author Kevin Phillips Wednesday about his new book, "1775: A Good Year for Revolution," which follows "a United States taking shape rather than losing headway." Phillips argues 1775–not 1776–is the more important year of the American Revolution. Click to read an excerpt from the book and to see a past interview with Phillips on Democracy Now!

Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick discuss the creative process behind their new 10-part documentary series, "The Untold History of the United States," which spans from the 19th century to the present. "Americans don’t know history," Kuznick says. "The history they do know is mostly wrong." [includes rush transcript]

“The Palestinian people want to be free of the occupation,” award-winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy summed up this week. It is that simple. This latest Israeli military assault on the people of Gaza is not an isolated event, but part of a 45-year occupation of the sliver of land wedged between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, where 1.6 million people live under a brutal Israeli blockade that denies them most of the basic necessities of life. Without the unwavering bipartisan support of the United States for the Israeli military, the occupation of Palestine could not exist.

It’s been more than two weeks since Superstorm Sandy hit New York City, yet thousands of people in the city’s public housing buildings are still in the cold. The city says it has restored some level of power to all housing projects, but as of Wednesday, nearly 16,000 public tenants were without heat and hot water. Some remained without any reliable water — hot or cold. Also out of service were dozens of elevators impacted by the storm. One of the areas most affected has been Coney Island at the southern tip of Brooklyn, where the storm poured saltwater into basements, devastating equipment. [includes rush transcript]

Amaia Engana didn’t wait to be evicted from her home. On Nov. 9, in the town of Barakaldo, a suburb of Bilbao in Spain’s Basque Country, officials from the local judiciary were on their way to serve her eviction papers. Amaia stood on a chair and threw herself out of her fifth-floor apartment window, dying instantly on impact on the sidewalk below. She was the second person in two weeks in Spain to commit suicide as a result of an impending foreclosure action. Her suicide has added gravity to this week’s general strike radiating from the streets of Madrid across all of Europe. As resistance to so-called austerity in Europe becomes increasingly transnational and coordinated, President Barack Obama and the House Republicans begin their debate to avert the “fiscal cliff.” The fight is over fair tax rates, budget priorities and whether we as a society will sustain the social safety net built during the past 80 years.

We continue our conversation with broadcaster Tavis Smiley and professor, activist Dr. Cornel West about their push for President Obama to address poverty in his second term. Smiley argues the ultimate question now, is: "Are we ready to push?" He and West have organized a symposium to take place on Jan. 17, prior to Obama’s inauguration, to demand Obama call a White House conference on the eradication of poverty. [includes rush transcript]

Many of the East Coast’s waste treatment plants failed during Superstorm Sandy, causing them to release thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the area’s waterways. In this video report, Democracy Now! teams up with the watchdog group Riverkeeper to tour New York City’s industrial waterfront four day after the storm, and find mixed results from water samples taken along the way. [includes rush transcript]

The election is over, and President Barack Obama will continue as the 44th president of the United States. There will be much attention paid by the pundit class to the mechanics of the campaigns, to the techniques of microtargeting potential voters, the effectiveness of get-out-the-vote efforts. The media analysts will fill the hours on the cable news networks, proffering post-election chestnuts about the accuracy of polls, or about either candidate’s success with one demographic or another. Missed by the mainstream media, but churning at the heart of our democracy, are social movements, movements without which President Obama would not have been re-elected.

Tune in Tuesday night from 7pm to 1am ET for Democracy Now!’s live special coverage of the 2012 election. Amy Goodman and Juan González, along with investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, will offer real-time results from presidential and congressional races, and bring you coverage of voter suppression efforts and key issues in the race. Correspondents and guests will join us from Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., New York City and more.

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman speaks at the first event at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble since its reopening post-Hurricane Sandy. She links Sandy and other extreme weather events to climate change, and discusses the corporate media’s failure to make the connection.

New York City authorities promise the island home to 12,000 New York City prisoners sits on land high enough to withstand a Category 4 hurricane. But advocates told Democracy Now! they are still concerned that Rikers Island is not being evacuated, given the size of the Frankenstorm that is Hurricane Sandy. They also point to prison officials’ failure to communicate clearly with inmates and their families last year during Hurricane Irene.

Of the 11 initiatives before the 2012 California electorate, one drawing perhaps the most attention is Proposition 37, on the labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Whether or not this ballot passes could have a significant impact on how our food system is organized, favoring small, local organic-food producers (if it passes), or allowing for the increased expansion of large, corporate agribusiness (if it fails).

Watch our full three-and-a-half-hour "Expanding the Debate" special featuring Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson responding to the same questions posed to President Obama and Mitt Romney in the final debate of the campaign. In a pre-debate discussion, we speak to Ai-jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, University of San Francisco Professor Stephen Zunes, and Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction.org. [includes rush transcript]

In his first live television interview since his release from Iranian prison, journalist Shane Bauer shines the light on solitary confinement inside the California prison system. Bauer was one of three Americans detained in 2009 while hiking in Iraq’s Kurdish region near the Iranian border. He and Josh Fattal were held by Iran for 26 months, and Sarah Shourd — now Bauer’s wife — was held for 13 months, much of it in solitary confinement. [includes rush transcript]

We spoke with Mattias Gardell as he sailed through international waters on board the Swedish boat to Gaza, Estelle, before it was seized Saturday by the Israeli military as it attempted to break the Israeli blockade. The boat was called a "provocation" by Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. "What is a provocation is the fact that the current right-wing Israeli government has enforced the illegal seize of Gaza," Gardell told Democracy Now! [includes rush transcript]

Watch Amy Goodman’s appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal from September 29. In the interview, discusses her New York Times best-selling book, "The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope."

A stunning indictment has been handed down in Cincinnati, focusing attention again on police killings of people of color. This is a start for accountability and justice. Cleveland should pay attention. As the thousand people gathered there last weekend said clearly, “Black Lives Matter.”

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